Hello guys! Some of you know me because I talk to you on all Namana Bags channels and I’m always ready to help you with any question to make your instruments be in comfort. Yeah, I’m Anya, an account manager of Namana Bags.

As part of a working trip, I was lucky to attend HUG festival (Hungarian Handpan & Worldmusic Gathering) in Hungary. It was the first music festival in my life which caused a storm of emotions in me!

Budapest, meet us: getting to know the cultural city

First of all, a tourist pays attention to architecture and perhaps I’ll start my story with it. When I was walking around Budapest I was overcome by mixed feelings and thoughts – either I was in the distant past, or I was in the modern and dynamically developing future. I instantly rushed off on a sightseeing tour of Budapest, because I wanted to get the full enjoyment of European architecture.

By the way, this is a very interesting and convenient feature for tourists – in the city center, there are small open buses that go to the main attractions of the city. Do you want to see all the beauties of the old city? Then this is 100% your way.

I certainly liked the old city and sometimes I had the impression that I was in my native land – Ukraine. Western Ukraine has similar architecture and the center of Kiev (the capital of Ukraine) is similar to the center of Budapest.

Elena and I stayed at the vibrant Marco Polo Hostel. This is a very cozy and atmospheric place with a huge number of books in the main hall. But the main part of the trip, we lived in a camping area in the festival area.

Nature also pleased me if not to take into account lots of crop around. Landscapes looked familiar to me, like relatives. They reminded me of my homeland.

Let’s go: it’s time to get accustomed to HUG festival

As soon as I arrived at the festival, I immediately liked the atmosphere. There were not a lot of people and not a few.. about three hundred people, as it seemed to me. As it turned out, the festival was full of open, kind and friendly people.

Photos made my Thomas Hammer

We met Slavic brothers, guys from Slovakia. Peter is a great djembe player and Dushan is a maker of handpans. We chatted for half a day about everything in the world from past historical events in our countries to the current time. This is certainly a great experience to chat with people from other countries live, find out about their culture and life that you cannot read about on the Internet and will not see on TV!

We also saw good friends. Danny with whom we already worked at that time had a touching dog. Django is a very kind and incredibly calm pet. I remember how he “sang along” to the artist during the concert. Everyone around was laughing 🙂

And that live music… It was cool to listen to live and chat a little with Kabecao  – one of the most talented top-hand musicians. His music is breathtaking from the first notes! And how charismatic he is! Even when music from the other end of the festival interfered with his performance, he knew how to get out of the situation and at the same time work out his concert perfectly! After that, I went to him to take a photo and it was very nice that he recognized me on a T-shirt with bananas and that I was “girl from Namana” (laugh) 😁😄😃 I was also very impressed with Yatao music. Perhaps this is the most harmonious and unique combination of handpan and didgeridoo.

Here are some performances at the festival:

Performance 1

Performance 2

Performance 3

In conclusion, I would like to say that you need to go to such events to relax. There is a warm atmosphere, interesting and kind people and at the same time, it is an experience sharing. Cool! I wish you a bright musical journey, this is a really nice experience!

With love and care,
Namana Bags team

Protected by copyright © A copy of the article is possible only with reference to the source.